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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28271691">On My Way</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/JudeAraya/pseuds/JudeAraya'>JudeAraya</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>2007, 2011, 2015 - Freeform, Angst, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Love, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:35:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,397</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28271691</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/JudeAraya/pseuds/JudeAraya</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone else is out there, looking at the stars too.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dan Howell/Phil Lester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Phandom Fic Fests Holiday Exchange 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>On My Way</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/minev/gifts">minev</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Happy Holiday to my Secret Santa!  I hope I managed to bring the angst and the love. </p><p>Prompt: song inspiration from My Tears Are Becoming the Sea by M83</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>I’m slowly drifting to you (you) || The stars and the planets || A billion years away from you || I’m on my way </i>
  </p>
</div><div class="center">
  <p>by M83</p>
</div><hr/>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <b>2007</b>
  </p>
</div>The snow never stuck. Well, rarely. It was lovely; the cold wind and the pelting flakes against his cheeks on the walk home from school earlier reminding him of a bright winter day, himself as a child, his mother’s hands on his, helping him craft a snowball.<p>Happiness never really stuck either, did it? At sixteen, uncomplicated happiness was both a faint echo and a tease all at once. Something he’d had, something he thought, wildly, he might never have again. There was something wrong with him, about him. The boys at school sensed it, his wrongness like blood in the water. Attracting the biggest sharks, the ones hungriest to take something out on. </p><p>Midnight, everyone in his house asleep, found Dan was in the snow. It soaked through his thin flannel pajama pants. He was in short sleeves, paying no mind to the shivers wracking up through his body. He wasn’t even sure why he was even <i>there</i>. In the snow, in this body, in this life. He’d been numb all day, for days actually. It wasn’t new, it came and went. The numbness, when he came out of it, was somehow worse than the fear. The numbness came with thoughts that snuck in, that intruded and shouldered past his common sense, past any good, self-preserving sense. </p><p>So he’d gone out, into the snow, hoping to shock his body into feeling something, anything else. </p><p>In the end, it wasn’t the snow or the cold that worked. It was the night sky. </p><p>The storm had passed sometime around dinner, sometime between his father pressing him about work ethic, both of his parents impressing upon him how much smarter he was than his actions showed. If only he’d apply himself. </p><p><i>I do</i>. There was no way to explain really, what it meant to muddle through everything else, the crushing anxiety, the knowledge of what was expected, how he’d sit on the pressure of revision and meeting expectations. His own anxiety was a self-fulfilling prophecy. He’d put off revising to avoid it. He’d put it off even as the impending deadlines complicated everything more. <i>I do</i> he wanted to say. <i>I can’t</i>, on the tip of his tongue. </p><p><i>I can’t</i> could and did mean something different moment to moment, and so he bit it back, because even he hadn’t a good answer for what he meant by it. </p><p>He’d thought it that night in bed. He’d thought it as he walked into the snow--only a couple of inches, but more than he’d seen in ages--and knelt in it. </p><p>The sky was so big, stars brilliant in the crisp sky. He couldn’t remember seeing the sky so clear, inky black lit by a blinding half moon to his left and a scattering pinprick canvas of starlight over everything else. <i>How many people are looking at the sky, right now?</i></p><p>In the end, it wasn’t the cold, his soaked pants or the pinpricks of pain in his feet, bare and buried in a few measly inches of snow that woke him. Breath caught, freezing and sharp in his lungs, numbness washed from him so quickly it was almost violent. </p><p><i>Someone else is out there, looking at the stars too</i>. He’d never know them, but also, he kind of did, in this moment. Dan wasn’t alone in his loneliness. Ultimately, he wasn’t the only lost, scared, hurting boy. He was meaningless and meaningful.</p>
<hr/><p>Uni both was and wasn’t what Phil wanted. He wasn’t one for parties like this--well, Phil of before wouldn’t have been. York had been his test in a new skin, a new Phil, a boy--<i>man?</i>--who didn’t have to hide. He didn’t feel as guilty as he had, nor as ashamed of the secret he kept still and burning in his chest and belly. Maybe when he goes home, as he was bound to the next day, that guilt would rear its head again. Holidays with his family, a version of Phil none of his York friends knew either. </p><p>So he wasn’t quite integrated yet. That was all right.<i> Right?</i> </p><p>They’d forecasted snow, only it hadn’t come. Just a tiny flurry of it earlier in the day. Night had fallen while he’d been inside a stranger's home with a handful of friends and a boy whose name he’d gotten and forgotten. His lips were still tingling, his body slowly falling into post-sex lethargy Phil had been delighted to discover when he’d first found the freedom away from home to be, to take, to be taken, to have. Now, a few years later, it was lovely and lonely. Yes he’d had a taste of first kisses and touches and crushes and missed connections, of made connections, but not <i>the</i> connection. </p><p><i>Not that it stops me</i>. Phil touches his neck where he’s sure to have a bruise he’d have to hide from his family. There wasn’t any guilt. Sex was nice and Phil liked the closeness and the kissing and obviously coming his brains out wasn’t exactly a hardship. </p><p>He was a little drunk still. He leaned against the wall of the house he’s just been in. It was brilliantly cold and he’d forgotten a jacket again. That was all right, too, because his body was still warm, his blood singing, his muscles loose. He wasn’t ready for his empty bed yet. Not ready to remember that he would be in that bed, still alone. The sky was clear, not a cloud, nor the promise of snow in sight. The stars were something else though. Brighter than he remembered them being in ages. Not that he stargazed much. It seems a romantic sort of thing to do, yeah? Something you’d do with your <i>someone</i>, the someone he hadn’t yet met. </p><p>He’d do it, one day. Find someone who would want the things he wanted, need the same simple things he couldn’t seem to find. A companion, a best friend, a soul mate. Someone who wouldn’t care how sappy he could get. One day, Phil would plan something romantic, a secret stowed away on a night that meant nothing--no anniversary nor birthday--just a special day of his own making.</p>
<hr/>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <b>2011</b>
  </p>
</div>Phil was in the flat making a ridiculous ruckus over the newest Sonic he’d gotten. They usually sat together, squashed on Phil’s little couch, poking at each other with sharp words that left them laughing and breathless and frustrated because <i>oh, my God why do you keep falling there, Jesus Christ.</i> Dan could only pretend for so long though, with Phil. He hadn’t it in him to pretend tonight.<p>It was warm, too warm for mid-June, and Dan’s fringe was curling more than usual. He had nowhere to be, no energy to be anywhere else, and so he’d left it, dripping and curling after his shower. When he made no move to straighten it Phil had given him one of <i>those</i> looks, the ones that meant he was really seeing. Dan had kissed his cheek and said he needed a break from sitting. He was sweating on their small balcony, Manchester spread before him. The light pollution was too much for more than a few stars to peek through. The city glittered more than the sky. </p><p>Through the open door he heard Phil swear after another crash and burn. Dan almost turned back; imagined himself curling up next to Phil, distracting him with touches. There were few things Dan really felt when he was like this, and Phil was most of them. </p><p>Dan wasn’t alone, but in this moment, he was lonely. Phil could sympathize but would never be able to empathize. Dan wouldn’t want him too, never wanted any of this to touch Phil. A quiet told him Phil had shut off the game, maybe too frustrated to keep going. Dan smelled him before he saw him, Phil’s raspberry shampoo and crisp deodorant giving away the moment he stepped out onto the balcony. </p><p>“All right?” Phil took Dan’s left hand, easing it from the balcony railing. His fingers ached when Phil curled their hands together. He’d been holding on too tight, again. Dan shrugged. His smile was a convincing lie with everyone: his family, his new manager, his fans. Not with Phil; he could never lie to Phil, even at the start. Dan made some sort of face meant to indicate something like <i>no but yes</i>. Phil didn’t pull him back into the apartment, past the pile of revision materials Dan let gather dust. Past the mess of a kitchen Phil’d left behind, again. Past the pile of papers they’d argued over when Dan had piled everything in symmetrical stacks, somehow messing up a system of scattering Phil had. Dan didn’t claim to understand it, nor why he was compelled to disorder Phil’s things by ordering them his own way when he began to feel most messy inside. </p><p>“Wish there were more stars,” Phil said. His head was on Dan’s shoulder. Neither of them were even looking up at the sky. Phil’s words, the shape of sound and tone, meant something. If Dan were really a good boyfriend, he’d try to unpuzzle whatever it was Phil meant. </p><p>He was numb, and there weren’t really stars, but there was Phil. Even now, far from his old home and old self and even far from the self-hatred he’d packed away in boxes deep in his mind, the numbness was a large, inexplicable thing that sat in his chest. He hated it.</p><p>“C’mon then,” Dan said. “Make me see some.” He didn’t even try to force leering or jest or irony into the joke. Little frown lines, the kind he hated to put on Phil’s face, came and went when Dan touched a thumb to them and kissed them away. “Leave it. It’ll be okay. I’m all right.” </p><p>“You aren’t,” Phil said, more emphatically than Dan expected.</p><p>“Well, I will be.” Dan tried to be sure of it. He had Phil and this little life they were beginning to scrape together. He didn’t need a blanket of stars to break the numbness, to remind him he wasn’t the only one looking up at the sky now. Phil’s fingers in Dan’s hair, bruising his hips, teeth on Dan’s shoulder, gasping and laughing, <i> Fuck, I love you,</i> when Dan came with a whimper all over them both cracked that numbness  wide open. Dan smiled into Phil’s chest, fingers doing that thing he’s learned, bringing Phil over the edge with him. After, cleaned up and still broken wide open, body so, so present, Dan had pressed the words back against Phil’s mouth. Because, <i>fuck</i>, he loved Phil too.</p>
<hr/>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <b> 2015</b>
  </p>
</div>Years ago, Phil had been resistant in a petulant and childish way when his parents sold their old home, settling on the Isle and their happiness. He and Mar hadn’t lived in Manchester anymore; his parents could and should do as they pleased. But Phil was incredibly nostalgic in his own way. Or, Dan would tell him, scared of change.<p>Maybe it was premonition, a knowledge in his bones, that psychic ability he joked (but maybe secretly wondered if he had) about having inherited. Perhaps he’d always been afraid of change because one day he’d be just on the other side of it. It was stupid, he knew, years after his father had gotten better to still feel the echo of anxiety and fear the Isle sometimes hit him with. Phil was remarkably good at stubbornly putting his head down and barreling past, or ignoring, bad feelings. Today  was Boxing day, and after this walk there would be board games and mulled wine and tomorrow Dan would be coming in after his own visit home for Christmas. </p><p>The cliffs were windy, sharp with winter. London got cold differently, wind tunneling between buildings, city-smell threaded through it. Even the cold was clean here. His mum and dad were ahead of him, hands clasped. His mum’s laughter carried back, snatched by the wind, as if even the weather knew Phil needed to pull it together. </p><p>Tomorrow he’d have Dan in his bed again. It hadn’t been long since he’d seen Dan, but they were so attached, so used to being in each other’s pockets that it just felt wrong to be without him, like Phil was a shape incomplete, not fitting anywhere without Dan by his side. </p><p>Maybe tomorrow he’d ply Dan with a little too much wine, watch his cheeks flush with each sip, with easy laughter and family. Dan always tried to cover his intense competitiveness when they all played together but couldn’t quite pull it off. Martyn tended to egg it on, found it hilarious how Dan and Phil couldn't let things go because they were competitive with each other. When on a team or opposed to each other, just working in different ways on the same wavelength. </p><p>Maybe after too much wine he’d bundle Dan up in the new hat his aunt had made just for him last Christmas, and bring him outside to watch the stars. Despite exhaustion from his earlier walk with his parents, from staying up too late talking around plates of leftover cookies and mince pie with his family, Phil had snuck out before bed. The stars were so bright you could see by them. He missed Dan enough to ache from it.</p><p>Still, the weather promised to be clear tomorrow. He’d checked. Even though they both loved holiday evenings with Phil’s family, they loved the <i>them</i> they’d made together over the past six years, a unit of one, more. Alone in the dark with only stars and a bright moon, Dan would help him forget the last little echoes of anxiety that still always lingered, surprising him in short bursts from time to time. </p><p>It was too cold for a lingering blanket-under-the-stars kind of moment. When Phil had looked into the weather for tomorrow, he’d seen that both Saturn and Jupiter would be bright enough to see without a telescope. Dan would have something to say about inevitability, about how the light shining from across the galaxy would exist regardless of them. The stars and planets weren’t inherently romantic. </p><p>Phil couldn’t care less really, if they made them romantic through togetherness and sentiment, if were fate or even social narratives that made it all seem special. Some things were inevitable, unmoveable, existed just because. He knew Dan felt that too, when it was just the two of them, regardless of all of his existential somethingness. Phil wasn’t bothered by any of it, not when what he wanted was simple. A kiss under a huge sky, a hand to hold, being grounded by the skin and smell and feel of Dan, <i>his</i> Dan with the expanse of sky, distance and space draped all around them. </p><p>He fumbled his phone out of his pocket with wine clumsy fingers so he could text Dan. </p><p>
  <i>You should see the stars, they’re incredible tonight.</i>
</p>
<hr/><p>They’d all stayed up late, later than planned and later than Dan had hoped they would. Not because he wanted to sleep, but because even a few days home wore him thin, stripped him down until all he could feel was haunted. They were in a different home, and his father wasn’t there, thankfully. Adrian was grown enough now that they could get along differently than they had as children. They’d never be an easy fit; their personalities were just so different, but it was better than before. With his mum and grandparents there, staying up late to talk about nothing was bearable. Eventually his grandparents had left, however, and his mum and brother’s conversation had taken a turn toward the maudlin as it neared midnight. Dan didn’t need to reminisce to feel sad,<i> thank you very much.</i> He was perfectly capable of that on his own. </p><p>He’d excused himself with little grace after a half hour of it, so anxious about becoming more anxious or depressed he just blurted something about fresh air and darted out of the house without a coat. He was met with breath stealing cold. Dan welcomed it, arms crossed, head spinning. He was fine, it would all be fine. Tomorrow he’d leave and there would be Phil and Kath and Nigel and walks by the ocean, being cold in the wind off the sea. But he would be cold <i>with</i> Phil, which was worlds from Dan cold and alone in Wokingham. Past midnight the houses around him were quiet, the dark pressing in on him a comfort. Dan wasn’t one for being in the dark, alone, but right then, irrational fear was better company than ghosts he’d spent years trying to lay to rest. </p><p>Above him the night sky was clearing, clouds scuttling away, a star strewn sky unfurling in front of his eyes. </p><p>With a gasp, he remembered himself, in the snow, years ago. He’d forgotten--<i>repressed</i>, his therapist liked to remind him--a lot of details from when he was a teenager, trapped here. She’d explained that it was the process of unboxing that triggered sudden memories. There didn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason for why he’d repressed some things but couldn’t escape others. Well. He knew exactly why his brain might squirrel ones like <i>these</i> away so he could simply <i>get through</i>. </p><p>The sky was naked now, with no clouds and only the light of stars to be seen. The ground was bare but, still, Dan could feel exactly how he had that night, sixteen and so lost, trying to keep himself afloat by kneeling in the snow in the middle of the night. He hadn’t wished for someone. He hadn’t wished for a rescue, or let himself really dream of a better life that night. His need that night had been both more basic and tremendously complex: survival. </p><p>Dan’s fingers gripped his phone. He could call Phil and he’d answer, immediately, regardless of the time. Dan could say, <i>when I was sixteen I thought I’d die from fear, from hating myself, from being alone</i> and Phil would remind him that he was never alone. He’d mean now, with him, but Dan knew it was true even before he’d had Phil. Back then, Dan had felt alone in his life, in his family. At sixteen he’d learned it in another sort of way: knowledge had simply meant he recognized there were other people in the world looking up at the sky, maybe even some feeling just as lost as he. Now, grown up and on his way to so much better, Dan knew, regardless of the sky or the stars or even whether they were far from each other, that he was never alone in any way. </p><p>Still, that didn’t mean he didn’t wish Phil were <i>here</i> so much he ached. </p><p>Tomorrow he’d have Phil with him again and, okay, it wouldn’t all be magically better, because Dan wasn’t completely all right, not yet. Phil wasn’t a cure, but he was a comfort. He was a constant companion, he was bedrock that <i>made</i> Dan feel safe enough to want to unpack boxes of trauma in the first place. Tomorrow Dan wouldn’t be in Wokingham. Dan could kiss Phil like he wasn’t a secret, sleep in a bed with him without anyone thinking twice of it. </p><p>For now, Dan allowed himself a moment to remember who he had been. Closed his eyes and asked himself to exhale into the frigid air and to inhale mindfully; to offer his past self compassion and care. To be thankful to himself for the work he’d done to get here. </p><p>When he opened his eyes the stars were as bright as they’d been, the sky just as vast, the knowledge of space, unending and unknowable, just as big and incomprehensible. But they were also simply beautiful. It was a beautiful night and tomorrow would be even better. </p><p>In his hand, he felt the staccato vibrating pattern of Phil’s text tone. Dan’s phone screen was so bright it hurt his eyes; Phil’s message a different brilliant that wove warmth all through him.</p><p><i>You should see the stars, they’re incredible tonight.</i> </p><p>Fingers numb from cold, Dan managed a response. </p><p>
  <i>They really are.</i>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you so much to Calvinahobbes and Rawitsamehh for being fantastic beta readers!! I could not have done this without y'all</p><p>If you enjoyed, you can always <a href="https://judearaya.tumblr.com/post/639224381036445697">reblog</a> on my tumblr. I thrive on love and am unashamed :D</p></blockquote></div></div>
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